Gone, but not forgotten

So, as I have mentioned before, Mason has a thing for flushing 'unflushables' down the toilet, so this story was inevitable. The kids' bathroom toilet has been broken for a couple of days. The plunger wasn't doing the trick, and Matt knew that he needed to remove the toilet and find out what was lodged inside, but as you can imagine it wasn't at the TOP of his priority list, ewww! Well, he will probably learn a lesson in procrastination from this one, since the toilet was free from raw sewage in the beginning. Last night some friends came by and we all sat outside and talked while the kiddos played. As it was getting dark Mason went in to go potty. I forgot about the broken toilet - and so did he. Matt and I cleaned up the toys, then headed inside, only to hear Kinley yelling "Mooooommmmm, you have to come see this!" I instantly remembered the broken toilet. Ooooops. I ran in to find poop water at least an inch deep covering the bathroom floor, the rug soaked, and the carpet getting wet at the edge of the bathroom. Gross! I grabbed the nearest non-favorite towels and started mopping up the edge to avoid soaking the carpet. McKinley informed me that since the toilet started to fill up with water when they flushed it, she just kept flushing it to make it go down... but it didn't... another oooops. We put the kids to bed, then started our dirty job. Which resulted in this:

Matt was not amused at my attempt to photograph the event for future generations. :) After lots of cursing and fishing with a bent hanger, Matt was able to get the object loose. As soon as I heard the clanking in the ceramic I knew what it was. I had noticed that the little resin frog statue that said "Toadally Loveable" that used to be on a bathroom shelf was missing a couple of days ago. It was broken in half, so I didn't really care about it, but I had forgotten to look for it. Matt was able to pull it out (seriously gross!) - here is what was left of it. Apparently the smaller end that had been broken made it through with the original flushing a few days ago, but this piece was a little too big :). So here is the funny part, I went into the kids' room (they were still awake) and asked if anyone had flushed my froggy statue down the toilet. Both kids said they hadn't. Then I went and got it (it had been washed off) and showed them, asking again who had flushed it. McKinley immediately said she had not, but Mason didn't say a word, he just stared at it with an incredulous look on his face. Finally he asked in amazement "Mom! How did you get that back?!?" GUILTY! But, it was so funny that I just laughed about it. Needless to say, we had a talk about only flushing human waste, not home decor, while Matt re-assembled the toilet. I spent the next hour or so sanitizing the entire bathroom, and all was as it should be. The kids are now totally amazed every time they flush that toilet, they say "Mom! Look, it works!" :)